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Privacy Policy

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This Privacy Policy applies to information that The Associated Press and its affiliates (referred to collectively in this Privacy Policy as “AP”, “we,” “us,” “our” and other similar pronouns) collect through those AP web sites and mobile applications which make this Privacy Policy available as a statement of privacy practices (each such web site and mobile application, a “Service”). This Privacy Policy explains the types of information we collect through the Services, how we will use and disclose the information once it is collected, and how you can opt-out of some of our uses and disclosures of your information. By using any of the Services, you agree to the terms of this Privacy Policy as applied to those Services, including changes made to the Privacy Policy as described in Part 11 below.

Please note that this Privacy Policy does not apply to information that you may provide to us, or that we may obtain, outside the Services, such as through our other web sites or mobile applications or over the phone, by mail, or in person.

1. What information is collected through our Service?

User-Provided Information

During your use of a Service you may provide us with personal information, such as your name, e-mail addresses, your activities, including browsing and transaction history, or other information that could be used to identify you as an individual or allow someone to contact you, as well as any information associated with such information personal information (collectively, “Personal Information”).

Location Data

When using our Services from a mobile device (a “Mobile Service”), you may choose (using your device’s location settings) to share the geographic location of your device with us. We use your location information to localize your newsfeed and customize Services for you in other ways. Your device location may be transmitted to us any time that a Mobile Service is running (even if you are not actively using the application or it is running in the background on your device). Your device may continue to transmit its location information to us until you change your settings to stop sharing location information.

If you set your device to not transmit location information to us, certain features may not be available or their functions may be limited. For example, you will have to manually enter a location when conducting a search. You should also know that turning off location sharing only prevents your device from sharing its precise location. Your network service provider may still provide coarse location information (based on access points you’ve connected to, for example). The information provided varies by service provider. You should check with your own provider to find out what information is provided and if there are ways for you to limit it.

Service Usage Information

As is typical of many web sites and mobile applications, our Services automatically collect certain information when you use them. Such information includes, for example, your “IP address” (which we may associate with your domain name or that of your Internet access provider or wireless carrier, and your general location), information about your computer or mobile device, a unique ID number associated with your device or other unique identifiers such as advertising identifiers (e.g., "ad-ID" or "IDFA"), web browser and operating system information, the language your computer or device is set to, wireless connections you are using, the referring page that linked you to us, general information about your usage of our Services, the pages, content or ads you see or click on during your use and when and for how long you do so, and the next web site you visit when you leave our web site, and any search terms you have entered on our Services or a referral site.

Among other things, this information enables us to generate analytics reports on the usage of our Service.

In addition, we may deploy various tracking technologies through our Services to collect additional information about your use. For example:

We may use cookies or local shared objects, such as “Flash cookies.” Additional information regarding our use of cookies and local shared objects is set forth in our Cookie Policy (which is incorporated herein).

HTML5 may be used to store information on your computer or device about your Service usage activities. This information can be retrieved by us to determine how our Services are being used by our visitors, how it can be improved, and to customize it for our users.

A pixel tag (also known as a “clear GIF” or “web beacon”) is a tiny image – typically just one-pixel – that can be placed in an online page or electronic communications to you in order to help us measure the effectiveness of our content by, for example, counting the number of individuals who visit us online or verifying whether you’ve opened one of our emails or seen one of our articles.

These tracking technologies may be deployed by us and/or by our service providers or partners on our behalf. These technologies enable us to assign a unique number to your computer or device, and relate information about your use of the Services to other information about you, including your Personal Information. These technologies also enable us to recognize you when you access our Service using different web browsers or devices.

2. Opt In and Opt Out

You can opt-out of our promotional emails by clicking on the opt-out link within the e-mail you receive. Please understand that it may take us a few days to process any opt out request and that even if you opt out of receiving promotional correspondence from us, we may still contact you in connection with your relationship, activities, transactions and communications with us.

3. How is your information used?

We or our service providers may use the information we collect from and about you to perform the following business functions:

administering our Services and your account with us

enabling users to use our Services and their features

localizing the content and articles that are displayed to you based on your geographical location

responding to your requests, questions, and concerns

market research

improving or developing new features and offerings in our Services

sending you marketing and other communications, including information about products, services, and events, of ours and of others, that we think might interest you (You may opt out of receiving such communications from us by following the opt out instructions in any email communication you receive from us)

protecting our rights and property

customizing our Services to your interests and history with us

tailoring ads displayed to you in our Services and elsewhere to your interests and history with us

other purposes disclosed when personal information is submitted to us

To perform the above functions, we may match information collected from you through different means or at different times, including both Personal Information and information about your use of the Services, and use such information along with information obtained from other sources (including third parties) such as demographic information and updated contact information. We or our service providers may also use your information to assess the level of interest in, and use of, our Service, our e-mails and our other messaging campaigns both on an individual basis and in the aggregate.

4. External Platforms

We may maintain a presence on social media and other external platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter. We may occasionally incorporate certain third party social networking features onto our Service. This Privacy Policy applies to our use of information you submit to us there, but it does not apply to what those third party platforms do with your information.

Our Services may allow you to share information with us that you have already provided to a third party social networking platform. For example, you may be able to create an account on our Service or log-in to our Service using your Facebook account or other third party credentials. If you do so, then Personal Information or other data that you have provided to that third party may be made available to us by that third party subject to their own privacy policies, terms and conditions. Social networks and other external platforms have their own privacy policies which explain how they will use, protect and share your information, including any information you share on those platforms from our Service, and we encourage you to read them. The information we receive from these platforms may depend on your privacy settings. Any such information that we obtain will remain subject to that third party’s privacy policy and we will use any such information in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

We may also include tools on our Services that allow you to share and/or publicly post articles, content or information from our Services to your profile on a third party social network. You may choose to share information about your activities on the Service with such third party platforms and its users, including publishing your information about what content you may have viewed on our Services. If you visit a Service while logged into certain social media platforms, the social media platform may be able to identify your browser and associate the technical information provided by your web browser with other information that they have already collected about you, which may result in their ability to identify you. In addition, when you choose to share information about your activities on the Service with certain social media platforms, AP may send technical information about you to that platform as well as information about what content you are viewing.

5. Do we share Personal Information and Service Usage Information with others?

Yes, for the limited purposes described below. We may share your information:

with third parties who need your information in order to provide services to us (or on our behalf),

when we believe in good faith that disclosure is necessary to protect our rights or property, protect your safety or the safety of others, investigate fraud or respond to a government, law enforcement, judicial or other legal request, or to comply with the law,

in connection with a corporate change or dissolution, including for example a merger, acquisition, reorganization, consolidation, bankruptcy, liquidation, sale of assets or wind down of business.

The Services may also contain certain co-sponsored content and you may be requested to provide additional Personal Information to the co-sponsor of such content. We will disclose to you when you are submitting Personal Information to co-sponsors. The information practices of any third party c-sponsors are governed by their own privacy policies and are not covered by this Privacy Policy.

In addition, what you voluntarily post to public areas of our Service will often be readily available to other Service users. Finally, we may share non-personally identifiable information about usage of the Services (including aggregate data) with others, for their own use, in a form that does not include your name or contact information.

6. Third-Party Ad Servers and Networks

We use third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit our Service.

When you view an advertisement, whether or not you click on it, the advertiser, advertising technology companies, and service providers that perform advertising-related services for us and our business partners may collect some information from or about you. These companies may use information about your visits to this and other online properties or mobile applications, the region of the country or world where your IP address indicates you are located, as well as other information about you in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. These advertisements may appear in our Services and on other online properties or mobile applications. These companies may employ cookies, clear GIFs and other tracking technologies to cause relevant ads to be displayed to you. The information practices of these third parties are governed by their own privacy policies and are not covered by this Privacy Policy. We encourage you to read these businesses’ privacy policies to learn about how they treat your information.

For more information about third-party advertisers and how to prevent them from using your information, visit the Digital Advertising Alliance’s site at http://www.aboutads.info/choices/ or the Network Advertising Initiative’s site at http://www.networkadvertising.org/choices/. However, if you opt-out we may still suggest offerings (including content sponsored by third-parties) to you on our Service based on your history or your account preferences.

7. Do Not Track Disclosures

Some web browsers may transmit “do-not-track” (DNT) signals to mobile applications with which the user communicates. We currently do not change our tracking practices (which are explained in more detail under “Service Usage Information” above) in response to DNT settings in your web browser.

Our third party partners, such as web analytics companies and third party ad networks, may collect information about your online activities over time and across our Service and other online properties. These third parties may not change their tracking practices in response to DNT settings in your web browser and we do not obligate these parties to honor DNT settings. We utilize Google Analytics for our web analytics and you can opt out of your usage data being included in our Google Analytics reports by visiting https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.

8. Your Access Rights

You may review, update or correct certain of the Personal Information that is stored in your user account in our Services (if you have one) by using the “Contact Us” information below. We may ask you to verify your identity and to provide other details before we are able to provide you with any information, correct any inaccuracies, or delete any information. Your right to delete information is subject to our records retention policies.

9. Security

While we endeavor to protect the security and integrity of sensitive Personal Information collected via our Service, due to the inherent nature of the Internet as an open global communications vehicle, we cannot guarantee that any information, during transmission through the Internet or while stored on our system or otherwise in our care, will be absolutely safe from intrusion by others, such as hackers.

If you correspond with us by e-mail, text message, or using a “Contact Us” feature on our Service, you should be aware that your transmission might not be secure. A third party could view the information you send in transit by such means. We will have no liability for disclosure of your information due to errors or unauthorized acts of third parties during or after transmission.

If you create an account on our Service, you are responsible for maintaining the strict confidentiality of your account password, and you shall be responsible for any activity that occurs using your account credentials, whether or not you authorized such activity. Please notify us of any unauthorized use of your password or account or any other breach of security.

If we believe that the security of your Personal Information in our care may have been compromised, we may seek to notify you of that development. If a notification is appropriate, we will endeavor to notify you as promptly as possible under the circumstances. If we have your e-mail address, we may notify you by e-mail. You consent to our use of e-mail as a means of such notification.

10. “Linked-To” Sites

Our Service may contain links, banners, widgets or advertisements that lead to third party web sites. We are not responsible for these other web sites, and so their posted privacy policies (not this Privacy Policy) will govern the collection and use of your information on them. We encourage you to read the privacy statements of web site visited after leaving our Service to learn about how your information is treated by others.

11. Changes to this Privacy Policy

We may change this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we do, we will let you know by posting the changed Privacy Policy on this page with a new “Last Updated” date. In some cases (for example, if we significantly expand our use or sharing of your Personal Information), we may also tell you about changes by additional means, such as by sending an e-mail to the e-mail address we have on file for you.

12. Contact us

If you have any questions or comments regarding our privacy practices, you may contact us at: